


Staying In For The Night

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 19:57:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2321453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The clone left Shepard a little more shaken than he'd thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staying In For The Night

Shepard had one priority when he could finally call the apartment that Anderson had given him his own and not have to race out and get roped into yet another death-defying adventure. That hot tub had his name on it. It was pure indulgence, but damn it, he had earned the chance to soak in a bath. After everything that he had been through, on what to him had been a non-stop roller coaster of danger, crazy, and trauma, he needed the peace that he could find from sinking into the tub and, for what seemed like the first time since he’d learned of the Reapers, relax.

It took less than five minutes for him to start going stir crazy. 

It was ridiculous, but it seemed that Shepard found more relaxation on the field of battle than he did in the comfort of a warm bath. Even if he set aside his need to stop the Reapers and protect the galaxy, he could not find that comfort in the lap of luxury that was his new apartment. If it weren’t him, he’d probably laugh. Of course, as it WAS him, he felt more like screaming.

“Pardon me, Commander.” Glyph’s sudden appearance caused Shepard to jump and reach for a gun that wasn’t there. The holo-drone made no note of his reaction. “Major Alenko is outside, requesting to speak with you. Shall I invite him in?”

Well, if there was something guaranteed to make him feel better... “Yes, Glyph.” Glyph blinked out of sight and moments later, Shepard heard the door slide open.

“Shepard?” Kaidan called.

“Up here!” 

A few moments after Shepard called out, he heard Kaidan ascending the stairs and Kaidan came into view. He took a moment to appreciate the view, a sly smirk forming on his face. “I seem to be overdressed for the occasion.”

Shepard couldn’t help the return grin. “If you feel like taking off some of your clothes, I won’t mind.” Kaidan quickly shucked off his standard uniform, hesitating at the briefs. He glanced back to Shepard, who, as he’d gotten into the tub expecting a good long soak, hadn’t worn anything. 

Quickly, though, Kaidan shucked off his briefs, joining Shepard in complete nudity. “Not like you haven’t seen this before,” he said with a cheeky grin. He slid into the tub beside Shepard. He looked to Shepard, smiling at his lover. “God, I can’t remember the last time I had a decent soak.”

“No hot tubs in Vancouver?” Shepard asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No time, more like. Seems like I haven’t stopped for more than the occasional brief sanity check since... probably before Saren and the attack on Eden Prime.”

Shepard chuckled. “Tell me about it. I can’t even call the time I spend at Lazarus Station as a relaxing vacation. I don’t even remember it beyond running for my life. Again.”

The mention of Lazarus Station and all that it implied brought a dark look to Kaidan’s face. “You know Shepard... We’ve never really talked about... what happened to you.” He hesitated over saying what they both knew he was referring to. Shepard had a brief flash back to the Normandy, watching it burn, feeling himself gasping for air. Kaidan’s comforting embrace, though, kept him anchored, kept the fact that it was merely a memory, in mind.

“Truth is, I don’t particularly like thinking about it. I prefer to think that... I was just in a coma, unconscious but alive the whole time.” The prospect of having died was, though he wouldn’t say it aloud, terrifying. And the implications of Cerberus being able to bring Shepard back to life were... unpleasant, to say the least. There was cold comfort in knowing the price tag made it unlikely that there would be a repeat of the process.

“I know what you mean. That whole business with the clone... It must have brought back... a lot of that.” Kaidan’s awkwardness with the subject, how he tripped over making explicit reference to the fact that Shepard had died, was something that he appreciated. The illusion, or delusion, was something that Shepard sometime needed, just to stay functional. 

And the clone... There was a can of worms that he hadn’t needed opened. “More than I ever would have thought.” He sighed. “Maybe having his discussion in the hot tub isn’t the right place, hm?”

A few minutes later, they’d slipped into some basic civilian casual clothes and made their way into the upstairs sitting area. Shepard didn’t feel much better about what they had to discuss, but it was difficult having a serious conversation while naked in a hot tub. Maybe not impossible, but still.

They were both quiet for a long moment, seemingly waiting for the other to start the conversation back up. Finally, Kaidan looked to Shepard. “So... Talk to me, Shepard. There’s... probably a lot to say about the clone.”

The damned clone. Shepard had so many conflicting feelings on the thing that had worn his face, he hardly knew where to start. “The clone was wrong, Kaidan. There was no right or wrong choice on Virmire.” Shepard hadn’t expected to start there, but then again, telling Kaidan that he’d been the wrong choice had been one of the first things the clone had done. Start at the beginning, he supposed.

For a moment, there was a somber look on Kaidan’s face – he and Ashley had been good friends. The clone’s words had been angering, as angering as seeing something walking around with Shepard’s face but acting so very... not like Shepard. “Thanks, Shepard. You know that... it wasn’t you, right? It had your face and your voice, but it wasn’t you. It was just... a Cerberus tool, some... thing with your face, but not you.”

Shepard smiled dimly. “It could have been.” The smile faded. “It really could have. If the Illusive Man had implanted me with some kind of control chip... That could have been me.”

Kaidan watched as the man he loved seemed to physically retreat into himself. Shepard seemed to pull in, as if trying to become smaller. It was odd, not just seeing a trained Alliance soldier curl up like this, but seeing Commander Shepard, the leader of men, reacting more like a child after a nightmare than the solid emotional rock who had defeated Reapers.

The sight made Kaidan reach out and gently touch Shepard’s shoulder. “Never. You would never have done that. I know you, Shepard. You wouldn’t work for Cerberus. You worked with them because they were doing something that needed to be done, that no one else was doing, but joining them? Accepting their twisted ‘values’? You’d never do that. It’s not who you are.”

Shepard wanted to believe him. But he had always questioned. It had never been something that he could define to his satisfaction – Miranda said once that the Illusive Man had wanted him back just as he’d been, but how could he have known? What if the Illusive Man had had some piece of programing dug in, something that would whisper the Illusive Man’s orders and make him follow them-

As if to prove why Shepard loved him, though, Kaidan reached out and took his hands, as if grounding him to this room, this place. With him. “Shepard?” A pause as he waited for a response. “John?” 

The use of his first name, the name no one seemed capable of calling him, shook Shepard out of the uncomfortable thoughts. “Sorry. Guess I spaced out on you there.”

“You did.” Kaidan sounded like he was trying to cover concern – the fact that Shepard had died in the Collector attack was an elephant Shepard had a tendency to simply dance around, rather than discuss out loud. And, truthfully, Kaidan was more than willing to join him in that dance. It was more comforting than trying to accept the reality of it – after all, it was a hard thing to even consider as reality.

“The clone could have been me, Kaidan. Part of me... wonders if I could be the clone. If that was the real Shepard, or if the real Shepard died in the Collector attack and I’m just... some copy.” He remembered when he woke up on Lazarus Station, when he was interrogating Jacob about what exactly had happened to him, Jacob had said that he’d been ‘pretty sure’ that Shepard wasn’t a clone, but Jacob had not been in the Illusive Man’s inner circle. He could have been wrong. Hell, Miranda might have been given false information as well, been given some half-formed lump of genetic material the Illusive Man had called Shepard’s remains and told her to make it into a full-grown human being. If Cerberus could make one clone, they could have made two. They could even have made more. 

For a moment, Kaidan was silent, considering. “Do you... remember anything? Between... when the Collectors attacked and... waking up?” He still couldn’t bring himself to actually say the words.

Shepard had done everything to suppress the memories – if anyone else had asked him, he remembered nothing pretty much from the point he hit the eject button on Joker’s escape pod until Miranda had been shouting in his ear. But for Kaidan... “I remember... I remember I had an oxygen leak. I could... see my air, escaping through the seals. I knew that even if the rescue ships got there... I wouldn’t make it. I saw... bodies floating, and then... I started to lose consciousness. I... I think I saw the Collector ship disappear – it must have jumped to FTL. I was relieved. I knew that the crew was safe. That... that felt like enough.” As Shepard had floated in space, he’d at least had that feeling, the sensation that the people he’d been tasked with protecting were safe. He hadn’t been ready to go, to die, but... There really was no right way to die, at least he’d been able to comfort himself with the thought that his crew, his friends had been protected. It had been enough. 

In the silence from Shepard, a dark cloud seemed to pass over Kaidan’s face. “I hated leaving you behind. I know you ordered me to go, but...”

“I’m glad you did.” Shepard figured that either Kaidan would have had to watch from the pod with Joker as Shepard had drifted away, or, worse yet, he would have been spaced with Shepard as well. And Cerberus had broken the bank to bring Shepard back – would they really have gone to that kind of effort to bring back Kaidan?

Kaidan tried to summon a smile, though the whole conversation was far from the kind of thing that he really wanted to spend time talking about. “I... was there anything else?”

Poking around at the memories they were trying to look at was like clawing at a scab, but for Kaidan... Shepard was willing to do a lot he wasn’t comfortable with. “I’m... not sure. I really don’t remember anything. Maybe there was something, but... I don’t remember anything.” If anyone wanted to know the answers of what came after death, they’d have to ask someone other than Shepard. It all seemed like a mostly forgotten dream, or a nightmare.

“Well, then you just disappointed a whole number of philosophers,” Kaidan said, a brief bit of respite from the weight that they had felt with the rest of the conversation. 

But Shepard couldn’t stick with the more upbeat attitude. “The fact that I can’t remember anything... That could mean that I’m a clone, though.” 

For a long moment, there was silence between them. What was there to say to that? This was not a conversation that, even given the lives that they’d come to lead, either of them really had expected to have. Kaidan knew that he had to say something to his lover. “Shepard... John. You remember everything that happened before the Collector attack, right? Everything that made you the man that you were to that point?” Kaidan already knew the answer to that one, he didn’t need Shepard to say it out loud. He wouldn’t have been the man Kaidan had fallen in love with if he had been different in some significant fashion. Any difference that existed was one that made no difference to him. “That makes you still that man. The clone... He wasn’t that man. If he was, Brooks wouldn’t have been able to manipulate him like that. She made him her puppet.” 

“So if she’d been able to succeed, to have the clone take over my life, you wouldn’t have been fooled, even if you hadn’t been there with the rest of us?” 

“Not for a second. I questioned you for working with Cerberus, when they showed their true colors. But you let me. You listened to me. You understood why I had questions. That’s what convinced me that you were still you. No clone could copy that.” He reached out and pulled Shepard forward, into his comforting embrace. “And no matter what else, as far as I’m concerned, you are John Shepard. The man I’m in love with. That’s all I need to know.” To emphasize his point, he leaned in and kissed Shepard, then gently resting his forehead against Shepard’s.

“Kaidan...” 

“Don’t ‘Kaidan’ me about this, Shepard.” Kaidan knew what Shepard’s protest was about – he was still uncertain of who he was after all of that business with the clone. But Kaidan had no intention of letting him wallow in that attitude. “You are John Shepard. Does it matter how you got to be that way, if it was some kind of program Cerberus wrote up or the old fashioned way? You ARE John Shepard, and that’s all that I need.”

What Kaidan needed. That seemed to hit home for Shepard. He did so many things for the galaxy, for the world beyond him, the galaxy on the other side of the doors. But none of that greater world seemed to give any attention to his needs and desires. But Kaidan... Kaidan only wanted him, and only wanted him as he was. Not the hero. The man. 

No one else cared about who Shepard was as a person. They all saw him as someone to put on a pedestal. But Kaidan... Kaidan saw him as the man who could break down like he had here. Instead of looking at him, after all his concerns, after the business with the clone, and wondering if he was not the same Shepard who he’d once followed to hell and back, during their hunt for Saren, Kaidan had jumped to the thought that Shepard WAS Shepard. He’d called the clone ‘a pale imitation of the real thing’ with all of ten seconds of seeing and hearing the clone, while Shepard had still been reeling at the thought of the clone.

He needed to save the galaxy, because no one else could do that. But Kaidan... Kaidan needed him. He needed the man he’d fallen in love with. And if he was or wasn’t the man who’d been born as John Shepard, that was still who Kaidan loved, who Kaidan needed.

That wasn’t a lot to anyone else. To Shepard, he found it to be what he needed to hear.

Kaidan seemed to see his words start to sink in with Shepard. “I love you, Shepard. That’s what matters.”

“I’m starting to get that,” Shepard said, a small, relieved smile forming on his lips. He leaned in for a gentle and chaste kiss. “I love you too, Kaidan.” They shifted slightly so that they could comfortably lay out on the sofa, neither wanting to get up from where they were, and finally got the relaxation that they needed.


End file.
